Tesla Pulled Levers on Pricing and Cost During a Tough Quarter

© Reuters. Tesla Pulled Levers on Pricing and Cost During a Tough Quarter

(Bloomberg) --

It began with a bang a huge party celebrating the opening of its newest plant in Austin, Texas but Teslas second quarter didnt stay ebullient.

As battery material costs soared andits most productive plant shut down for weeks amid Shanghais Covidoutbreak, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk took several steps to buoy revenue and rein in expenses: raisingprices, pausing hiringand cutting jobs.

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) was unableto pull a rabbit out of a hat, as Musk put it during thelast earnings call in April. While hesuggested then there was a chance output would snap back fromthe disruption in Shanghai and the company might come close to its first-quarter production total, Tesla came upshort by almost 47,000 vehicles.

The question now is just how effective Musk and his master of coin, CFO Zachary Kirkhorn, were in limiting the damage to earnings. The company has been crafty in the past with its end-of-quarter pushes, pulling all sorts of levers to get cars to customers and shore up results. While Musk reportedly predicted this one would be nutty, hes seen worse. The risks to Tesla wereexistentialwhen it struggled to ramp up production of theModel 3 in 2018.